As a recruiter for the past 20 years I have experienced some interesting challenges – COVID 19, being the latest.  We are being bombarded with news (some fake news) and some very serious concerns are being raised.  For Gallman Consulting – The safety and well-being of our Staff is paramount to us.  Therefore, we have advised them how to take care of themselves, protect others, and monitor the latest developments per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But….    WE ARE WORKING!!!    We are staying in touch with clients and continuing to provide our expert services.  

For clients who are especially concerned about face to face / onsite interviews, we recommend the following:

• Do a more in-depth phone interview before bringing potential candidates into your facility / offices
• Consider a Skype / Zoom or any number of virtual interview systems that are available.   

If a face to face interview becomes necessary, we will check with the candidates to find out if the following applies to them:

• Traveled outside of the US in the last month.
• Had contact with someone else who has traveled outside of the US in the last month.
• Had contact with someone who has the coronavirus.

You can ask these same questions when a candidate arrives for an interview, and even have them sign a form to verify the above.  Of course – it is a good idea to have hand sanitizer available on the premises. We can also ask the candidate if they are willing to wear a face mask if you prefer.

Gallman Consulting is ready to assist you in navigating this public health challenge and furthering the well-being of all employees.  We remain available to service your needs.  Our contingency plans ensure our internal processes will continue without interruption and you will have the candidates you need to fill your open positions.

We are in this together!

Best Regards,

Georgette
TE BU0901

Georgette Sandifer
Senior Director of Placement
Phone: 803-744-3304
gsandifer@gpsjobs.net
www.gallman-consulting.com

Your resume is the first and often the last thing a hiring manager sees about you. That means you must do everything in your power to avoid getting screened out at the resume review stage of the process. To that end, here are five of the most common resume mistakes you should avoid at all costs.

1. Typos and Grammar Errors

Typos and grammar errors are one of the easiest mistakes to fix. That’s the reason why leaving any on your resume is one of the fastest ways to get cut from consideration. Take advantage of spellcheck and grammar checking features in word processing programs to catch obvious errors. Next, print out a copy and read it out loud to yourself. Seeing it on paper and hearing it can help you spot any lingering mistakes. After that, get someone you trust to read it over and look for errors.

2. Not Customizing Your Resume

Many companies and staffing services use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to identify good candidates for a job. One of the things an ATS does is look for matching keywords. That means it looks on your resume for phrases that appear in the job listing. Let’s say a job listing mentions:

• Prepare bill of lading
• Operate lift truck and pallet jacks
• Oversee shipping activity

Those three phrases should appear on your resume. It kicks your resume to the top of the candidate pile.

3. Oversharing

A good resume is 1-2 pages. If your resume goes beyond two pages, it means you’re sharing too much information about each job. Remember, you’re sharing highlights about the position and your accomplishments. Maybe you picked up an award or certification at a job. Maybe one of your ideas saved the company a lot of money. Share that kind of information, rather than mundane details.

4. Get Specific

Get specific about what you did, rather than make general statements. Let’s say your last job was in fast food. A bad description looks like this:

“I handled customer service and worked in the grill.”

That description doesn’t tell the hiring manager anything. A good description looks more like this:

“Served as a shift manager, handling customer concerns about their orders, supervising 3-6 workers every shift, as well as operating the cash register and preparing food as needed.”

That description gives specific information about your responsibilities and skills.

5. Contact Information

A shocking number of job applicants get so focused on the jobs and structure of their resume that they neglect their contact information. Some people leave old contact information, and others forget to add it altogether. Make sure your contact information is at the top of the resume and correct.

Mind the Details

Crafting a good resume means that you mind the details. Is all the information correct? Is it free of typos and grammar errors? Does it include key phrases from the job description? Is it specific and concise? By focusing on these issues first, you avoid common resume mistakes and improve your odds of landing an interview.

Many companies select group interviews over individual interviews. Some companies want to gauge how you respond under added stress that can mimic actual job conditions. Other companies use them as a time and cost-saving approach. Whatever the reason behind the group interview, you need a plan to navigate a group interview successfully.

If you’ve never faced a group interview before, read on for some key tips for making the right impression.

Study the Company

Few things impress an interviewer less than candidates who don’t know anything about the company. This is as true for waiters and sales staff as it is for management trainee candidates. Minimally, you should know something about the following:

• Company history
• Company products/services
• Where your potential job fits into the company

If you can answer questions on these topics, you’ll match or outshine your competitors in the room.

Create and Memorize an Introduction

It’s common for the interviewer to ask everyone in the room to introduce themselves. This is a golden opportunity to shine. Highlight your experience, but also mention any soft skills or hard skills that might make you more capable in the role. Angling for a supervisory position down the road? Briefly mention some prior leadership experience.

Practice

Unless you’ve done a lot of group interviews, you should set up at least one or two practice interviews with friends. This lets you work out some of your nervousness about the process. It also gives you a chance to refine your answers to difficult questions. Quiz your friends afterward for honest answers about where you did well and what left them cold.

Listening

The last thing interviewers want to see is you tuning out whenever someone else speaks. It’s a bad sign that you don’t value the opinions or thoughts of others. The practice interview gives you an excellent chance to practice your listening skills, but it’s not the only opportunity. Leading up to the interview, make it a point to listen whenever you find yourself in a conversation. It will make it easier to remain attentive when the interview rolls around.

Body Language and Tone

Body language and tone can derail you in either an individual or group interview. You should look and sound confident. Looking confident means that you sit calmly, without fidgeting, and don’t slouch. Make sure you make good eye contact with both the interviewer and other candidates. Avoid waffling terms like “maybe” and “could be.” Use good projection so everyone in the room can hear you.

It’s About Awareness

Succeeding in group interviews is mostly about knowledge and awareness. You must know about the company and position. You should know your introduction by heart. You must remain aware of your body language and tone. You must also stay mindful of how well you listen.

Think you’re ready to tackle a group interview for a new job. Let Gallman Consulting help you get in the room.

The days of employees quietly accepting endless demands for overtime are largely done. Part of it is a culture shift as millennials stand poised to take up the lion’s share of the workforce. Part of it is a growing recognition of the damage chronic stress and exhaustion take on the health of workers. After all, no one is productive when they’re sick.

If you’re struggling with work-life balance, keep reading for five steps to help you establish the right balance.

Embrace the Word “No”

An endless cycle of obligations to friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and managers can leave feeling like your about to drown. Figure out what things really matter to you and say yes to those. Say no to everything else.

Apply the 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle holds that most of your biggest results come from a small amount of your work. Look for the parts of your work that create the most results and offload as much of the other stuff as possible. You’ll achieve more while actually doing less.

Get or Stay Healthy

When you’ve got lots of demands at home and at work, it’s easy to let your health and fitness slide into the background. Make those things a priority. Being healthy and fit makes it easier to weather stress. You can even build some family time around staying fit by organizing weekend hikes.

Ask for Help

Sometimes, you will end up with too much on your plate. When that happens, don’t try to be a hero or start sacrificing sleep. Reach out to colleagues for help at work. Talk to friends and family to help you manage personal obligations. More often than not, people are happy to lend a hand.

Accept Some Imbalance

No one can attain an ideal balance between work and life in the long term. Sometimes you have a big project that soaks up your time. Sometimes your kid needs surgery. These imbalances are part of the deal that is life. Accepting that things will tilt one way or the other sometimes will help preserve your sanity.

You’ll probably never strike a perfect work-life balance. What you can do is get a whole lot closer. Look for ways to prioritize your time energy on the things that matter most and get you the best results. Trim obligations you don’t care about. Ask for help when you need it. These steps will help you take some big steps toward a better-balanced life.

Stuck in a job that won’t let you find that work-life balance you want? Touch base with Gallman Consulting and let us find you a job that respects work-life balance.

Many people assume they’ll become less productive toward the end of the day. There is even some research to back it up. Throughout the day, you make countless decisions. By the end of the day, you’re probably experiencing some decision fatigue. In other words, your mind and brain have worn out their ability to decide things for the day.

Fortunately, you can take some steps to make sure you end the day productively.

Healthy Snacks

Chips and candy bars might give you a short-term burst of energy, but they don’t do much for your overall productivity. For that, you must turn to the world of healthy snacks. Go in for some almonds. Eat a banana and hard-boiled egg on break. If you work somewhere, it’s practical, get yourself a blueberry and low-fat Greek yogurt parfait and put in the fridge for later. These kinds of snacks are quick to eat. Plus, you can even make most of them at home ahead of time.

Frontload Difficult Work

If nothing else, the decision fatigue research backs up the claim that you should frontload more difficult work. By getting that out of the way earlier in the day, it leaves you free to tackle smaller but necessary tasks later in the day. As a bonus, you get to experience the “completion high” more frequently at the end of the day. That can help you stay productive at your smaller tasks.

Become Unavailable at the End of the Day

Distractions kill productivity when you’re well-rested. They can completely derail you when you’re already tired from putting in most of a day’s work. Tell everyone that you won’t answer emails, respond to Slack notifications, or take phone calls that aren’t extremely important for the last hour or two of work. That lets you focus your remaining energy on finishing any work you must complete before you leave.

A fall-off in mental performance at the end of the day is probably inevitable, but not necessarily a disaster for productivity. Staying productive at the end of the day is mostly about managing yourself in a way promotes productivity. Eating healthier snacks, ending your day with less demanding tasks and limit your distractions will help you marshal your mental resources better when you get to the end of your day.

Looking for a job that lets you be more productive than you are now? Gallman Consulting can help you find the right job at the right company.

It’s one of the most common questions among job seekers: Should I follow up after a job interview? Most of the time, the simple answer is yes. You should follow up. Very few potential employers will look negatively on you for showing some initiative. The less simple answer is still yes, usually, but you need to apply some finesse.

Let’s jump in and look at some of those finer details.

When Should You Follow Up?

A good rule of thumb is that you should wait at least a week before you follow up. A week is enough time for most companies to wrap up most of their interviews and start weeding people out. Even if they aren’t done picking people for second interviews or the position, they probably can tell you how long it will be.

How Should You Follow Up?

Take your cue from the interviewer. If you only spoke to the interviewer on the interview day and all other communication was by email, send them an email to follow up. It’s how they prefer to communicate. If you talked with your interview on the phone repeatedly in the ramp-up to the interview, give them a call.

When Shouldn’t You Follow Up?

One question you should always ask at the end of the interview is when you’ll likely hear from them. Some companies have very specific procedures and timelines for filling positions. If you interview with one of these companies, the hiring manager will probably give you a firm timeline, such as 10 days or 2 weeks. They’ll often follow that with something like:

“If you don’t hear from in two weeks, feel free to follow up about the position.”

That’s a not so subtle way of telling you that following up before then will not win you any brownie points or friends.

Following Up Helps

Following up about a position is generally a good way of telling a company you do want to work there. Still, you should act reasonably. Give it a week or so before you follow up. Communicate with the interviewer in the way they communicated with you most often. Don’t follow up if the interviewer strongly hints that it won’t be welcome before a certain point.

Job satisfaction is a fickle thing. If you work in a job that doesn’t challenge or stimulate you, it can become a kind of torture to show up every day. If you’re stuck in this kind of rut, keep reading. We’ve got seven ways you can boost your job satisfaction without quitting your job.

Spend Time with Upbeat Coworkers

There is always someone in the office who is perpetually unhappy. Avoid that person. Instead, find that chipper, upbeat person, and hang out with them. Happiness is almost infectious. That will make your job feel less tedious and frustrating.

Branch Out

Nothing kills satisfaction like monotony. If you feel like your days are interchangeable, look for ways to break up the routine. Find a committee to join or get involved with planning a party for a coworker.

Takeaway: If all else fails, start a committee. Building something often creates satisfaction.

Embrace Gratitude

Even if your job isn’t fantastic, you probably don’t hate everything about it. Maybe you like your coworkers, or the company has great insurance benefits. Take a few moments to remind yourself about the things you’re grateful for about the job.

Eat Healthier

A carb and fat-heavy lunch will make you feel lethargic, which makes it easier to feel dissatisfied with your job. Choosing healthy meal options like a garden salad with grilled chicken gives your body resources.

Takeaway: Eating healthy will serve as a mood booster.

Fix the Problem

Is there one specific task or process in your job that makes you hate it? If it’s not a core element of the job, talk to your manager about ditching that task or process. Most managers will embrace changes likely to make you more efficient and engaged.

Stop Procrastinating

We often use procrastination to avoid starting unpleasant tasks, yet this avoidance breeds stress. Stress breeds dissatisfaction. The stress and anxiety only grow worse as we contemplate the approaching deadline for the unpleasant task. Make a plan for doing these unpleasant tasks and getting them off your plate. The sooner they go away, the more satisfied you’ll feel about your job.

Takeaway: You also get the added benefit of giving your heart, nervous system, and adrenal glands a break.

Build In Easy Wins

Working on long-term projects can create dissatisfaction because the results remain off on the horizon somewhere. Create some short-term goals that you can accomplish each week. These easy wins can give you a psychological boost and increase job satisfaction.

Quitting your job isn’t the only solution to job satisfaction. Sometimes actions as simple as eating a little healthier and changing whom you hang out with can boost your satisfaction. In other cases, you may need to take more challenging steps like weeding out procrastination or creating a committee from scratch. There is, however, almost always a way to make your job more satisfying.

Have you already tried a bunch of these steps and still can’t find any job satisfaction? That means it’s time to look for a new job, and Gallman Consulting can help.

Every company wants to be the company that’s always flooded with resumes, yet most aren’t. If this sounds like your company, you’re probably wondering what to do. Keep reading to learn five ways you can transform your company.

Flexible Schedules

An exceedingly small number of families conform to the traditional model of an income-earning husband and stay at home mom. That means the traditional, rigid 8-5 schedule works for almost no one. While some job categories must adhere to a fixed schedule, you’ll become a place people want to work if they’ve got wiggle room in their schedules.

Takeaway: You can build some minor flexibility into rigid schedule jobs by including a no-penalty grace period of 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each shift.

Wellness

Some companies probably still encourage 80-hour workweeks, but that is a path to losing good employees. Your workers don’t want to burn out on the job or have heart attacks. They want more balanced lives that leave them healthy and active. Encouraging health and wellness activities will make your company more desirable for potential employees who want those balanced lives.

Provide Development Opportunities

No one wants to feel like they’re stuck in a rut in their job. This is especially true in jobs where there is a small chance of promotion or no clear path to it. Left to their own devices, employees will seek out professional development elsewhere. Offering professional development signals that you take a healthy interest in your employees’ progress.

Takeaway: If you don’t provide development opportunities, your best employees will find another way.

A Culture of Recognition

Study after study and article after article talk about how people desire recognition at work, often more than they crave a raise. It’s a big ask in companies where managers often struggle to manage their existing workloads. Carving out time to provide employee recognition can feel impossible. This priority must start from the top and may require bringing on more managers to lighten the workload. The upshot is that inculcating a culture of recognition will create a vastly happier group of workers.

Be Trustworthy

It’s a sad truth that managers and supervisors will sometimes tell outright lies to get subordinates to do what they want. They’ll exaggerate how soon something must be finished or pretend higher-ups are angry about the degree of progress. While this might work in the short-term, it drives a permanent wedge the second the lies get exposed, as they almost always do.

Takeaway: Always keep things on the level. It only takes a single lie for a supervisor, manager, or business owner to lose credibility forever.

The key to becoming a company where people want to work starts and ends with never treating people like a number. If you treat everyone like a human being and show a modicum of human concern, people will flock to your company.

Put in the work to become one of these companies.

Many people fear writing a resume. Some people fear to make mistakes, and others fear the possibility of rejection. All too often, though, people fear the writing itself. If fear has made you put off writing your resume, let’s try to put that fear to bed. You can write a stellar resume by following a few basic guidelines that we’ll cover right now.

Hit the Essentials

Every resume must cover certain ground. You must include any relevant education, licenses, or credentials. You need a work history, although you can generally keep it to the last ten years. Don’t forget to add your contact information.

Takeaway: Not hitting the essentials makes you look unprofessional, but now you know what you need.

Get to the Point Quickly

Whether your resume goes through an HR department or to a hiring manager, it’s landing in front of busy people. Don’t make them work to understand your meaning.

For example, don’t write: “Provided supervisory oversight for a project team that ultimately delivered a boost in revenue of $500,000.”

Instead, write something like: “Managed project team that created $500,000 in new revenue.”

Highlight Recent Accomplishments

If you’ve been in your industry for 15 years, you’ve got a lot of experience behind you. Don’t try to fit everything you’ve ever done onto the resume. Highlight recent accomplishments. Did you step into a supervisory position and finish a job during a crisis at your last job? Mention that.

Takeaway: Highlighting recent accomplishments sends the message that you aren’t just phoning it in every day.

Reuse Keywords from the Job Description

Many people stumble on this one. Keywords are just important phrases, usually related to a skill or industry jargon. For example, a warehouse might mention a specific software program they use for inventory management. If you know that program, mention it by name on your resume. Including these keywords makes your resume more likely to get to the interview phase of the process.

Look at Other Resumes before You Start

New to the job search process? Never written a resume before? If this is you, the process can prove difficult because you don’t know where to start. The easiest way to get a handle on writing a resume is to look at other resumes. The good news is that there are tons of free example resumes all over the Internet that can help guide you while you write your own.

Takeaway: It always helps to see how someone else has done something successfully.

Don’t let writing anxiety or other fears stop you from pursuing a better job. You can write a stellar resume. Hit the essentials and be concise. Highlight any recent accomplishments. Work in some keywords. If you struggle to get started, look for some examples online. Before you know it, you’ll have a stellar resume.

Once you prepare your stellar resume, it’s time to look for jobs. Check out Gallman Consulting career opportunities and we’ll help you place that resume with the right employers.

Much has been said about the power and benefits of habit and routines, including lower stress and more productivity. Yet, habit and routine can also have a dark side. They encourage us to become stagnate in jobs or situations that we don’t love or that don’t empower us. Trying something new means abandoning our routines for a while or developing new ones.

Let’s look at three larger benefits.

Boosts Your Creativity

As great as routine and familiarity are at making sure we pick up the kids and make lunch for work, they can also start wearing down our creativity. It turns out that creativity depends a lot on fresh experiences. Trying something new gives your brain fresh material to play with and can lead to new bursts of creativity.

Reduce Fear

The prospect of trying something new often brings with it the vague but persistent fear of some failure. Fear has a way of growing and infecting your view of other things, even the familiar. When you try something new, you decide you won’t be afraid of that potential failure. You start teaching yourself to be less afraid of everything else. You can even pick something where failure means nothing, like taking up abstract painting. Also, if you get it “wrong,” no one will know.

You Improve Product You

In a sense, you are the product you sell to an employer. You bring skills, experience, and knowledge to the table. When you try new things, you expand your skills and broaden your experience. You improve the product that is you, which can make it easier to secure a raise or a better job. Of course, that means you must pick new things that have some relevance to your job or desired career path.

Trying new things has other benefits, such as making you a better-rounded person or simply improving your self-knowledge. Still, it’s a solid first step in boosting your creativity. It can help you master your fear. Learning new things can also make you a better catch for potential employers.